Seriously, powerpoint presentation are not intrinsically evil, but even when used as a backdrop slideshow they need to be done correctly. Give your audience time to look, and don't make them decide between listening to you or looking at your images. All your material may be well known to you, but if your audience isn't up to the exact same level as you (and if they were, why would they listen to your lecture?) they will need time to follow your train of thought, especially if you jump from one bullet point to the next.posted by PontifexPrimus at 5:33 AM on November 26, 2009 [2 favorites]

It's hard to condense this stuff into even the space of an intelligible book. I thought he did an admirable and entertaining job given the constraints.posted by treepour at 5:35 AM on November 26, 2009

Kant really could have done with 140 character limit. I think that's even shorter than some single words in German.posted by painquale at 6:28 AM on November 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

What I learned from this video:

Kant was a clever guy and would have had a lot of favorites, but he asserts his points of view as if it was scientific fact which can get annoying. This is probably easier to see with pictures of Wolverine than in the original German.posted by Obscure Reference at 6:42 AM on November 26, 2009

Not fast enough... I would have liked to watch the whole thing at speed 4X, but the viewer doesn't allow it. Some of the slides were interesting though. I had never seen the wolverine themed Dali and Van Gogh parodies.posted by nicolin at 6:42 AM on November 26, 2009

Good morning. Just a second while I get this connection to work. Do I press this button here? Function-F7? No, that's not right. Hmmm. Maybe I'll have to reboot. Hold on a minute. Um, my name is Abe Lincoln and I'm your president. While we're waiting, I want to thank Judge David Wills, chairman of the committee supervising the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery. It's great to be here, Dave, and you and the committee are doing a great job. Gee, sometimes this new technology does have glitches, but we couldn't live without it, could we? Oh - is it ready? OK, here we go:posted by neuron at 8:26 AM on November 26, 2009

Can I vote "both." It started out pretty good, but then when he locked himself into comic book illustrations that didn't really match what he was talking about, it got annoying.

Oh....another super condensed take on Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgement using comic book covers.

Yawn.

But I do like how he sticks it to Kant for being one of the worse writers in the history of the world. Beyond terrible actually, truly horrifically semi-sublime its utter twisted grotesqueness..

Anyhow Douglas Wolk is another way to cool to talk to you at a record convention rock critic snob with a record label that puts out mini-cds even though you played in a Fall cover band with him in the mid-90s.posted by Skygazer at 10:31 AM on November 26, 2009

Don't know the guy personally, did not attend the most recent PDX ignite (although I have attended in the past).

@PontifexPrimus Erm, that's sort of the point of Ignite talks. You get five minutes, twenty slides, and you don't get to control the rate at which the slides progress. It's an artificial constraint that usually leads to some level of comedy.posted by endquote at 10:22 PM on November 26, 2009

Yeah, it would have been useful to clarify in the post that the format (20 slides, 15 seconds each) is how Ignite works, not just an irritating aesthetic decision by Wolk.

Aside from the sub-optimal audio quality I thought this was pretty good. The use of Wolverine as his first example indicated straight away that he wasn't aiming to be too highbrow or "pseudointellectual", and the laughs from the audience suggested that they understood this as well. Then he hits the basic ideas and gives a fairly clear sketch of each of them. Now you know at least one thing about Kant's critique of aesthetic judgment, and you'll recognize a couple of other ideas about it when you next encounter them. And maybe you've become interested enough to go and learn more about it, at a more sedate pace. All in all, that's pretty good going for 5 minutes' education.

NB: Not a substitute for a full college course from a trained Kant scholar. Always consult your professor.posted by logopetria at 12:30 AM on November 27, 2009

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